


Monster Hunting for Dummies

by Laroja



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi, No beta we die like mne, Post-Season/Series 01, oh look another monster hunting fic, steve's parents' a+ parenting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-21
Updated: 2019-05-21
Packaged: 2020-03-09 06:08:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18911122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laroja/pseuds/Laroja
Summary: The Demogorgon has been defeated but there are more monsters that need hunting and Nancy decides that she's the woman for the job. Steve and Jonathan are just along for the ride.





	Monster Hunting for Dummies

**Author's Note:**

> Hallo, hallo, welcome to my fic.  
> I'm sure you were all dying for yet another "The OT3 goes monster hunting" fic so here I am, providing. I started this fic in 2017 and rewrote it several times until I finally found the version that worked for me the best. So here we are, with version 4.  
> I'm just gonna... go and let you get to the fic now, so have fun and if you liked it, leave kudos or a comment or both (Both? Both is good.), those things sustain me.

_Hello. You have reached the voicemail of Robert and Linda Harrington. We are currently not at home. Please leave a message._

 

_Mr and Mrs Harrington? Hi, this is Nancy Wheeler. Steve’s girlfriend? I’m calling because… um, we’re at the Sacred Heart Medical Centre in Spokane. Steve’s, um, he’s hurt. Real bad. The doctor’s won’t tell us anything because we’re not family but… it looked really bad and we don’t know if… If… Just… It would be good if you could come here as soon as possible. Um, thank you. I’ll see you soon. Sorry... for the bad news. Um. Goodbye._

 

***

 

 It started - as most things in Steve’s life seemed to do - with Nancy Wheeler.

Now, Steve loved Nancy, he did, she was quite possibly the greatest thing that had ever happened to him but between first ditching his old friends for her and _then_ fighting that Demo-whatever-Nancy’s-little-brother-and-his-friends-had-called-it, there was no denying that ever since Nancy had come into his life, things had gotten a lot, well, _stranger_.

So when Nancy practically marched up to him at school with that determined glint in her eyes, Steve probably should’ve done the only sensible thing and run far, far away. Unfortunately, you could say a lot of things about Steve Harrington but that he had good self preservation instincts wasn’t one of them. See fighting a monster armed with nothing but a but with nails and sheer dumb luck.

“Look at this,” she said and thrust a piece of paper into his face, far too close for him to actually be able to make out what was written on it. He gently grabbed her wrist and moved it away from his face until the paper came into focus. It seemed to have been cut out from a newspaper and he looked at Nancy with raised eyebrows.

“Read it,” Nancy said impatiently, waving the piece of paper around until Steve snatched it out of her hand so he could actually do what she had told him to and read it.

It was an article about mysterious and unexplained disappearances in a small town a couple of miles away and honestly, Steve had no idea what Nancy was getting at here.

“So?” he asked and Nancy rolled her eyes.

“So?” she repeated. “So, doesn’t this seem weird to you?”

Steve scanned over the article again and shrugged. “I mean, yeah, sure. I guess? I… What do you want me to say here, Nance?”

Nancy groaned. “Ugh, come on.”

Steve barely managed to grab his bag and slam his locker shut before Nancy grabbed him and started dragging him away.

“Where are we going?” he called out, trying to ignore the stares they received from their classmates.

“Jonathan,” was Nancy’s sole reply and oh yeah, Jonathan. One of those weirder things Nancy had brought into his life. They were friends now.

Becoming friends with Jonathan Byers was not something Steve had ever expected. Jonathan had always been a bit weird and socially awkward and Steve… Well, Steve had been popular and an asshole. But apparently, there were some things you couldn’t share without ending up liking each other, and fighting a monster from an alternate dimension was one of them.

 

“There you are!” Nancy exclaimed once she’d spotted Jonathan and the other boy startled slightly before looking up.

“Oh, hey, Nancy. Steve.”

Steve gave him a little, awkward wave and Nancy was already brandishing the newspaper cut-out at him. Jonathan took it from her cautiously and read it.

“What is this?” he asked and to Steve’s relief, he looked just as confused as Steve felt.

“That,” Nancy said, “is what we need to talk about.”

Jonathan gave Steve a helpless look and Steve shrugged.

“I have no idea, man,” he replied to the unspoken question and Nancy rolled her eyes.

“Don’t you get it? It’s happening in other places too. It’s not just Hawkins.”

“What do you mean? What’s happening in other places too?”

“Mysterious disappearances? Unexplained deaths? It’s happening all over the US.”

Jonathan and Steve exchanged a look, realization dawning on both of them.

“You don’t mean… Like the Upside Down?” Jonathan looked a bit pale when he said those words and Steve’s mind, too, immediately flashed back to the image of a monster with no face.

Nancy shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s exactly like that but it’s weird.”

“Weird? Weird how? Do you think it’s all… supernatural?”

“It could just be your run-of-the-mill serial killer,” Steve added. God, he hoped it was all just your run-of-the-mill serial killer.

“No. I mean, it could be, in some cases but… I’ve done a lot of research over the past weeks. And some of the things that have been happening, for years, they can’t just be explained by serial killers or something like that.”

For a few seconds, no-one said anything. Jonathan shifted nervously.

“But why are you telling us about all this?” he finally asked. “I mean, what do you want us to do about it?”

A question Steve wanted to have answered too even though he wasn’t entirely sure he was going to like the answer.

“Well, I, look…” Nancy started but was interrupted by the school bell signalling the start of the day. She sighed. “Look, can you both come over to mine after school? I can show you all my research and we can talk about everything. Please?”

Steve, who had been planning to spend the day at Nancy’s anyway, shrugged.

“Sure,” he said. Might as well listen to Nancy now and get it over with. He knew her well enough to know she was not going to just let whatever this was go. Nancy smiled at him and his heart did this little flip it always did when she was around. God, he loved her so much.

“Jonathan?” Nancy turned away and looked at the boy in question.

“I, yeah, sure,” he said and Nancy beamed at them.

“Great!” she exclaimed. “I’ll see you later then.”

She practically bounced away and Steve and Jonathan stared after her silently until the second bell rang.

“That girl,” Steve said with a shake of his head and Jonathan made a noise in agreement. Steve straightened up and shifted the bag so that it rested more comfortably on his shoulder.

“Well, I guess we’ll continue this after school. See you, Byers!”

 

“We’re home, mom!” Nancy called out as soon as they entered the house and Mrs Wheeler walked out of the kitchen.

“Hello, honey. Did you have a good day at school?” she asked.

“It was fine, mom,” Nancy said impatiently and grabbed both Steve’s and Jonathan’s wrists, dragging them away towards the stairs.

“Door stays open!” Mrs Wheeler called after them and Nancy blushed a bright red.

“Oh my God, mom!” she whined. “Jonathan is here, too!”

“My point still stands. Oh, Jonathan, did you tell your mother that you are here?”

Jonathan nodded. “Yes, ma’am, I called her before I came here.”

Steve hadn’t told his parents he’d be at the Wheelers’. But then again, he doubted they’d even notice. Or care.

“Good,” Mrs Wheeler said. “She worries so much about you and your brother ever since…”

She trailed off awkwardly and for a second no-one said anything.

“Can we go now?” Nancy finally broke the silence and Mrs Wheeler nodded.

“Of course, sweetheart.”

In Nancy’s room, she closed the door behind them and leaned against it with an annoyed sigh.

“Sorry about mom,” she said and Jonathan and Steve shrugged in unison.

“It’s cool, Nance,” Steve said. He was glad the Wheelers even let him into their home at all, they hadn’t really gotten off to the best start after all, what with Nancy sneaking around with him behind their backs. It also probably wasn’t a point in his favor that they knew Steve and Nancy had had sex and had found out about it during a police investigation. Something like that was bound to make things weird. But Nancy’s parents, especially her mother, had accepted him into their family without any fuss. Steve liked the Wheelers. Sure, they weren’t perfect, they had their issues, and Nancy complained a lot but Steve thought that she was lucky to have the family she did.

“Um, shouldn’t we keep the door open?” Jonathan said. “I mean, your mom said…”

“Oh please,” Nancy said with a roll of her eyes. “It’s not like we’re gonna do anything indecent.”

“Unless that’s what you’re into, Byers,” Steve said and waggled his eyebrows just to see Jonathan blush.

Nancy punched his arm lightly and glared at him.

“I just want to talk without anyone hearing,” she said and walked over to her desk. She pulled a huge binder out of one of the drawers and unceremoniously shoved it into Steve’s hands.

“Umm,” said Steve and Nancy rolled her eyes.

“Go on. Read it.”

“You want me to read all of that?” Steve stared down at the monstrosity in his hands. That looked like a lot of reading and Nancy _knew_ he hated reading.

“Suck it up, Harrington, a little reading won’t hurt you,” Nancy said impatiently and Steve squinted at her. Was she sure about that? Was she really sure?

Nancy crossed her arms in front of her chest and gave him and Jonathan unimpressed looks, obviously waiting for them to sit down and do what she told them to do. And Steve always did what Nancy told him to do because Nancy was smart and great and he loved her and so he sat down on the edge of her bed together with Jonathan and opened the binder.

There were newspaper articles. A lot of them. Some of them as far back as the 50s, some of them more recent but all of them about weird things happening all over the country. Mysterious disappearances, unexplained deaths, strange phenomena… Whatever weird shit you could imagine, Nancy had found an article for it and she’d obviously spent a lot of time pouring over them already. Some words had been circled, sentences underlined and the margins were full of scribbled notes, all of them in Nancy’s small, neat handwriting.

“Nancy…” Jonathan said slowly, fingers tracing over one word next to a line that had the words “bite marks” and “blood drained” circled. It simply read “Vampires?”. “Nancy, what is this?”

“I told you, it’s my research. I’ve been going through the newspaper archives, trying to find things like what happened here and there’s… so much more than I thought. I think it’s all real. All those monster stories… Vampires, ghosts, werewolves… It all exists and they’ve been killing people for decades and it all gets covered up, just like it did here in Hawkins.”

Steve and Jonathan exchanged a glance and Steve slowly closed the binder.

“Nance, what you’re saying, it’s-”

“Don’t tell me it’s crazy,” Nancy interrupted. “Not after all the things we’ve seen.”

“But… vampires? And ghosts?” Jonathan started hesitantly. “Come on, Nancy, you have to admit…”

“Is it really that far-fetched?” Nancy started pacing, her eyes gleaming the way they always did when she got passionate about something and usually, Steve loved that expression on her but when it was brought on by talk about monsters? “I mean, we’ve fought a monster from a parallel world! Your brother has _been_ to that world! If that exists, why shouldn’t everything else? And I’ve even found academic texts about the existence of the paranormal!”

For a few moments, no-one said anything, then Steve sighed and mentally squared himself for what was going to come next.

“Okay, let’s… let’s just assume for a second that all of this really does exist. Monsters are real and they’re everywhere, killing people. Okay. So. What now? What are you going to do with that information?”

Nancy’s jaw tightened. “I’m going to hunt them,” she said in a voice that didn’t allow any arguments.

“You what.”

“Listen, we barely managed to save Will and we… I… couldn’t save Barb. And it… it sucked. I don’t want more people to have to go through all that when I could do something to help.”

“Nancy, we’re teenagers. What the hell are we supposed to do?”

“I don’t know!” Nancy exclaimed. “But I have to do something. And I want you two to come with me.”

Steve glanced over to Jonathan, hoping to find some support there but to his horror, Jonathan was nodding.

“Okay,” Jonathan said. “I believe you. I’m in.”

“What?” Steve exploded and jumped up from the bed, pacing the room agitatedly. “Are you two even listening to yourselves? This is crazy!”

“Steve…” Nancy tried but Steve quickly cut her off.

“No! We barely survived our encounter with that Demogreg-”

“Demogorgon,” Jonathan helpfully interjected.

“-Demogorgon thing! And now you want us to go chasing after more monsters?”

Nancy’s jaw tightened and she jutted her chin out stubbornly. “If it means saving people, then yes, that is exactly what I want.”

“What about… what about school?” Steve said, floundering, and he couldn’t believe that _he_ had to be the one to bring that up.

“What about it?” Nancy asked, her arms crossed, and seriously, what was happening here?

“You can’t just… you can’t just drop out of school to go _monster hunting_ , Nance. Your mom would never allow it.”

“I’m not suggesting we drop out of school. We stay here until we graduate. Then we leave. Our parents can’t stop us then. And we’d have time to prepare.”

“I… Jesus, Nancy,” Steve sighed in defeat. He knew he would never be able to get Nancy to change her mind.

“Look, you don’t have to decide right now,” Nancy said. “Take the binder. Take your time reading it and then decide if you want to come with us or not. I want you to come but I’m not going to be mad if you don’t want to. Please, Steve?”

And shit. _Shit_. How was he supposed to say no to that? Steve dragged his hand over his face and sighed.

“Fine. I’ll think about it. But I still think this is crazy. And you,” he turned to Jonathan, “are nuts for going along with this.”

Jonathan shrugged but Nancy’s eyes lit up and she hugged Steve.

“Thank you,” she said.

“I haven’t said yes yet,” Steve muttered but they both knew. They both knew what he was going to do.

 

A couple of hours later, Steve was in his room at home, making his way through Nancy’s extensive monster hunting research binder. It was… a lot. There weren’t just the news articles. Nancy had also found and included texts that sounded vaguely academic and scientific that delved into the possible existence of the supernatural. There even were excerpts from a book explaining how to get rid off and kill specific creatures. How Nancy had found that, he had no idea. Nothing on a demo-whatsitsface though.

Steve ran a hand through his hair, messing it up even further than he already had during the reading of Nancy’s binder. This was ridiculous. He couldn’t believe he was actually entertaining the idea of leaving Hawkins to go monster hunting with Nancy and _Jonathan Byers_ , of all people. If he was being completely honest, it scared the shit out of him. He was barely dealing with what had happened all those months ago. He still woke up in the middle of the night, drenched with sweat, his heart beating so fast he half expected it to burst out of his chest. And those were the good nights. Steve felt utterly unequipped to handle any of this shit and he had no idea how the others did it. He had only been at the periphery of it and still it had fucked him up more than he wanted to admit. And willingly exposing himself to more of that? It was absolutely batshit fucking _insane_.

But then again, it wasn’t like he could stop Nancy. She would do this no matter what he said. And the thought of letting her go without him… His stomach turned. Nancy putting herself in danger with only Jonathan there to help while Steve sat at home and did _nothing_... It was an impossible thought.

The doorbell rang and Steve startled so bad, he almost fell out of his chair.

“Jesus...” he muttered and heaved himself out of the chair. He stumbled down the stairs and when he wrenched open the door, coming face to face with none other than Jonathan Byers.

“What are you doing here?“ he blurted out before he could stop himself.

“I, um, thought we could talk. About Nancy’s idea.”

“Right,” Steve said. “Yeah, sure. Uh. Come in?”

Steve stepped back and Jonathan followed him inside. They didn’t say anything while Steve led Jonathan up towards his room and God, this was weird. Sure, they were on friendlier terms now but they had never really spent any time together _alone_.

“So, uh, make yourself comfortable,” he said as they entered his room and made a wide gesture. Jonathan settled down in Steve’s desk chair, eyes immediately drawn towards Nancy’s still open monster hunting binder, while Steve ungracefully plopped down on his bed.

“Where, uh, where are your parents?” Jonathan asked and Steve snorted.

“Not here.”

To be completely honest, he wasn’t entirely sure where they were. Somewhere where they didn’t have to spend time with their son.

“Right,” Jonathan said awkwardly. “So. What do you think about all this?”

“I think it’s stupid and dangerous and it’s gonna get us all killed.”

Jonathan let out a short, quiet laugh. “Yeah, probably.”

For a moment, they were both quiet, Jonathan absentmindedly flipping through the pages of the binder.

“You realize she’s going to do this with or without us, right?” he finally said and Steve sighed.

“Obviously. She’s Nancy.”

“She’s Nancy, yeah,” Jonathan agreed and a few more beats of silence followed. Then- “So, do you want to do this?”

Steve snorted. “Are you kidding me? Hell no. I’m _terrified_ . I still have nightmares about that… that _thing_. It scares the shit out of me.” Steve paused, resigned. “But I can’t let her do this alone, can I?”

**Author's Note:**

> Please don't ask me about an update schedule, there is no update schedule. Update schedule? I don't know her.


End file.
